THE CORPUS LUTEUM. 611 



like that of the fibrinous coagulum, increases in intensity. From an 

 indefinite yellowish or rosy hue, it gradually becomes a decided yellow. 

 This change is produced simultaneously with a kind of fatty degenera- 

 tion of its tissue ; which presents at this time, under the microscope, a 

 considerable deposit of oil globules. At the end of the fourth week, 

 the alteration in hue is complete ; and the outer wall of the corpus 

 luteum is then of a clear chrome-yellow color, by which it is readily 

 distinguishable from the neighboring parts. 



After this period, degeneration goes on rapidly. The clot becomes 

 dense and shrivelled, and is converted into a minute, stellate, white, or 

 reddish-white cicatrix. The yellow wall 

 grows softer and more friable, and exhibits 

 less distinctly the marking of its convolutions. 

 At the same time its surface becomes con- 

 founded with the central coagulum on the one 

 hand, and with the neighboring parts on the 

 other, so that it is no longer possible to sepa- 

 rate them fairly from each other. At the 

 end of eight or nine weeks (Fig. 172) the 

 whole is reduced to an insignificant, yellowish, 

 cicatrix-like spot, measuring about six milli- 

 metres in its long-est diameter, in which the . 



HUMAN OVARY, showing a cor- 



original texture of the corpus luteum can be pus luteum. nine weeks after 

 recognized only by the peculiar folding and 

 coloring of its constituent parts. Afterward 

 its atrophy iroes on more slowly, and seven or eight months may some- 

 times elapse before its complete disappearance. 



The size of the corpus luteum depends on the quantity of blood 

 exuded into the follicle at the time of its rupture, and on the more or 

 less active growth of its convoluted wall. Both these conditions may 

 no doubt vary in different cases, according to the general bodily devel- 

 opment, and the size and vascularity of the ovaries in particular. In 

 healthy women the weight of the ovaries, which is, on the average, 

 five grammes each, varies frequently twenty per cent, above or below 

 this standard ; and even in the same individual the right and left ovaries 

 are seldom of the same size ; usually differing from each other by at 

 least ten per cent. It is therefore impossible to fix an invariable 

 standard of size for the corpus luteum, corresponding with its period 

 of development. But it nevertheless follows, during the greater part 

 of the intermenstrual period, a general course of enlargement, succeeded 

 by a process of atrophy. The following list gives its weight as actually 

 observed* in eight cases in which the date of menstruation was known. 



* Transactions of the American Gynecological Society. Boston, 1878, vol. ii., p. 

 130. 



